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Category Archives: Transitions

The final college farewell for my children, yes, unless either of them surprise and wind up in grad school. But in the truest definition, my boy finally will commence to get on with whatever is next for him – which in the immediate aftermath is a trip to Iceland with his sister.

I can say the usual astonished parental things – wow, where did the time go? I can’t believe it – but no, really, I can believe it. The past seven years of University of Virginia experience have been wonderful, but that course has been run, and run well.

He knows, we know, that day is done.

Just as she was, he is ready and eager to head on down the road – likely westward toward the Rockies or perhaps the Pacific expanse. Doubtful that an extended detour through Thailand and Southeast Asia are in his cards, as they were hers, but something equally spontaneous out of him would hardly shock me.

I don’t lay claim to inspiring that spirit of adventure in them; I stayed in the same job 31 years, the same house 20-plus. They come by their world view and their thirst to go see, feel and taste honestly and through their own inspirations. If anything, they – and certainly the lovely and awesome Dee — have helped motivate my own commencement. Have helped me shake the inertia of routine and mindless comfort, the torpor of fear as well, and replace it with open-ended possibility.

Fresh eyes scan our horizons. Full hearts guide our next steps. We’ll gather tomorrow to recognize the miles covered, seal them in their special corner, and embrace boundlessness with its deserved gratitude and grace.

This story came out a couple of weeks ago and I forgot to post it here. It’s my second contribution to the great local magazine Distinction, for which I plan to continue to submit good stuff.

This one is extremely good stuff, in that it’s about the stunning struggle and enduring recovery of the wife of a local PGA Tour golfer. Audrey Leishman a year ago became suddenly and deathly ill while her husband Marc, one of the world’s top-ranked golfers, was practicing in Augusta, Georgia for the Masters. He rushed back to find Audrey, the mother of two young sons, with very little chance to survive.

I’m not sure where I came across what follows, but I’ve had it buried in my inbox for, well, going on a couple of years, it looks like …

Decluttering, I found it this morning and read through it again, for the first time, for all intents. I like it. You might, too.

Inspiration is always where we find it. Lessons and learning, as well. They’re all in here.

20 Things To Let Go Of Before The New Year
BY SHANNON KAISER
DECEMBER 16, 2013

How much stress are you carrying around? Do you feel burdened by life’s circumstances and emotional issues? Becoming more grounded and happy starts with letting go of worry and stress. I learned this in my own journey, through overcoming drug addictions, healing myself from depression, and walking away from a career in corporate to follow my heart and be a successful writer and life coach. In the process, I had to let go of a lot of things to become the person I am today.

Physically, spiritually and emotionally, I had to learn how to let go of the person I thought I should be in order to be the person I really wanted to be. Letting go of anything in life can be a little scary, but it can also be an amazing act of self-love.

Letting go of my worries and stress made a difference for me; of course I still dip in and out of some of my stress jar from time to time, but I’ve found this list a good reminder of what I need to strive for each day in order to reach unlimited happiness.

Here are 20 things to let go of in order to reach unlimited happiness.

1. Let go of all thoughts that don’t make you feel empowered and strong.

2. Let go of feeling guilty for doing what you truly want to do.

3. Let go of the fear of the unknown; take one small step and watch the path reveal itself.

4. Let go of regrets; at one point in your life, that “whatever” was exactly what you wanted.

5. Let go of worrying; worrying is like praying for what you don’t want.

6. Let go of blaming anyone for anything; be accountable for your own life. If you don’t like something, you have two choices, accept it or change it.

7. Let go of thinking you are damaged; you matter, and the world needs you just as you are.

The job coach reviewed my resume on his desk, used his thumb and forefinger like pincers and picked up the sheet.

“We can work with this,” he said.

I was leaving the newspaper business. This guy was supposed to help me. And he was treating my resume—my career—like a dirty diaper.

He read my face. “This is what you were,” he said. “We are going to talk about who you are. What your skills are. Not the jobs you’ve had.”

And for the first time in nearly 30 years I began to think that there were jobs out there that did not start with journalism.

My job coach was the first person who looked at my skills, not at job titles.

This column and this magazine is about the newspaper industry, but it’s instructive for your future—whether it is in the industry or out—to look at the extraordinary set of skills that newspaper people possess. Believe me, these are not in the skill set of many people outside the industry.

Unfortunately, I’ve had this conversation dozens of times in the past decade with newspaper people looking for a new career.

Like many who left, I chose to start a consultancy that turned into a small business. Others found new jobs. In either case, these skills—rather this combination of skills—learned in the newspaper business proved lucrative in new careers.

Rapidly synthesize complicated information. Journalists take it for granted that they can take notes during a four-hour meeting and then compose 800 words that capture the essential actions. This is an exceptional skill.

Make a deadline. In all the disciplines across the newspaper industry, deadlines are sacrosanct and daily. But talk to people in many other industries and they find deadlines, well, deadly. They are blown off or pushed back. The fact that you can make a deadline each day makes you valuable.

Compose coherent sentences. Even write some that sing. In the newsroom, we get used to a minimum level of composition competency. Step outside the business for a few weeks and you will appreciate those who can take subject-verb-object and write it clearly, and often with panache. This ability is not to be taken for granted.

Ask questions. Sometimes in my new job I am interviewed by a journalist who just won’t run out of questions. That’s great. A natural curiosity makes one smarter.

Great facial architecture. The best journalists remember that the head has two eyes, two ears and one mouth. According to that ratio, one should listen and observe four times as often as one speaks. This is crucial in another career you are just learning.

The ability to reserve judgment. Newspaper people learn to wait and listen with disinterest. The best never take a side. They explore points of view and ask for facts. But they never choose a side. No matter what field you might enter, the ability to stay neutral (until there is time to take a position) is important to building the strongest position. Aristotle advised us to know the other side as well as we know our own position.

Manage multiple projects. The best people in our business keep several balls moving at once. They can drop one to work another. This isn’t prevalent in everyone’s skill set.

Motivate. If you’ve been a manager in the business for the past decade and managed to keep your team focused on moving ahead in spite of the challenges, then you are exceptional. You’re a great motivator and other industries need that skill.

Creatively problem solve. Some of my newspaper colleagues once put out a newspaper after an earthquake that knocked out power by powering laptops with a car’s battery. Enough said. We know how to work under difficult circumstances.

Know the ins and outs of a community and who makes it run. We take for granted our knowledge of civics and which level of government or which business leaders make our communities work. If you move outside the newspaper industry, that intimate knowledge will make you exceptional.

Like many former journalists, I built a new career after thinking I would be a journalist forever. I hope those reading this do stay in a business that gets healthier than it has been. But if you don’t, take comfort in knowing that your skills are unique and extraordinary and can help you make a living.
Tim Gallagher is president of The 20/20 Network, a public relations and strategic communications firm. He is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and publisher at The Albuquerque Tribune and the Ventura County Star newspapers. Continue reading →

I don’t know Jeff Bradley, although I feel as though he is me in many ways.

His excellent blog postthe other day about being an out-of-work sports writer, which I include here because it’s poignant and relatable, is too common a story these days.

I just had numerous friends survive the media-company slashes in Philadelphia. I am happy for them, obviously, especially if sports writing remains what they truly want to be doing, if it is still the best thing for them and their families.

A year and a couple weeks ago, my detour met me straight up. There is a lot of angst that comes with such a parting and recalibrating, and Jeff, a much bigger-time sports writer than I ever was, gets at the heart of it well in his piece. He doesn’t write asking for sympathy, as some jerkwood blog commenter offered up from his snake pit. He just writes with honesty, same as I do here . . . and every day in the different word-jockey position I now hold.

I don’t know Jeff, but I wished him good fortune, as you do for fellow travelers. Too many of them on the road.

I don’t really know Frank Beamer well. I was around him a handful of times a year for a decade or more as a sports columnist. I didn’t sense a lot of spin in the guy. I thought he pretty much told it like it was, except for some schedule-padding and news-manipulating stuff back in the day when he was trying to make Virginia Tech matter. Which he did.

I sat next to him once at a banquet. We chatted and laughed a bit. He is a good fella.

The career eulogies bursting forth upon the recent announcement of his retirement as Virginia Tech’s football coach are earnest and true. Beamer was hardly glib. He was hard-boiled Fancy Gap. But he got it. He has class. Self-control. He was as professional as they come in college football in representing his school and his team on the field and in the media room.

A gentleman. Yep, he is a gentleman.

Of course it won’t be the same to see a Virginia Tech football game without Beamer on the sideline. We’ll get used to it. So will he. Sooner than he suspects, he might even enjoy being out of the snake-pit cauldron of constant recruiting, social media, message boards and instant judgments.

I hope it happens that way for him. He deserves it. He made Virginia Tech football into a thing of consistency, respect and resiliency, even if that national championship the Hokies hungered for proved too large a dream.

Tech’s stadium, and the field inside it, are already named in honor of others. But Beamer-Lane Stadium isn’t too awkward, is it? In the big picture, it doesn’t really matter. Virginia Tech knows the impact Beamer had on its national profile, its enrollment, its fund-raising, and Beamer knows, too, what he meant to his alma mater.

I haven’t read that big-hitter book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” yet . . . but I feel that life-changing spirit moving within me, hallelujah!

When the month turned, I promised myself to throw out, sell, give away or otherwise discard at least one possession a day. A New Year’s resolution in July. Why? Because I really don’t need a best-seller, or any of the scads-worth of decluttering books and testimonials out there, to sip on the affirming tonic of simplification.

Control feels good, in whatever amounts. Self-control; to breathe and count to 10 and let a virulent moment percolate and die. Self-discipline, to push through a workout or a task with mindfulness and feel lifted when it is done. Self-worth, to appreciate your place in the order of the universe and to value that gift.

It is along the lines of breaking a habit — “I will only drink two cups of coffee this morning.” — or promoting a new skill — “I will spend 15 minutes on that learn-a-new-language website, learning, um, a new language.” I will read just a chapter of this book a day, go to bed 30 minutes earlier each night, put a dollar into an envelope for charity each morning.

Extremes — obsessions, compulsions, hoarding — aren’t the issue. They don’t have to come into play. The ticket is small bites. Tapas meals, so to speak. Wednesday, the brand-new-with-tags sweatshirt hanging there that I will never wear went into the donation bag. Thursday, to the curb with the crusty living room chair with cat scratches down one hideous leg, and a couple of ratty area rugs shoved into the garage years ago for no perceptible reason. That felt damn good.

Now today, free time to root through books boxed and sitting in the attic. They are forgotten. Unused. Valueless here any more. Why are they there?

Inertia. That’s all. The force that mutes self-awareness, self-improvement, that reinforces unproductive patterns lapsed into without forethought. They are comfortable when they are unexamined. Shine a light on the clutter — physical, mental and emotional — and it scatters. It abhors challenge, craves the comfort of more of the same, then more of the same, and then more still . . . of the same.

This house will continue to streamline on its inevitable way to new hands. Same for the storage bins that time and experience shove under beds and into corners to darken the spaces that would most benefit from light and fresh air.

Purge the chaos, feed a soul thirsty for nourishment, even if it doesn’t realize it. That’s the chapter and verse. That’s the book.

So, this has become a melancholy week. This is the week three years ago my mom marked her 84th birthday, and died four days later.

Honestly, I’m still not sure the exact cause of death, other than the broken heart she’d lived with for the four years she was without my dad. I know she too was ready to go the night we sat on his bed, helpless in the nursing home; as it happened, she shared that same room, recovering from a broken shoulder.

But fate had different plans. And so she survived and endured and napped and disengaged – and passed the better part of 1,400 days waiting for her turn to go.

A shattered leg suffered in a fall at her assisted-living apartment, and subsequent kidney complications, put her on that irreversible path to goodbye.

Dorothy Mae was a farm girl from Denton, Md. transported to the Philadelphia suburbs as a young girl. She worked for a little while during the war after high school, but soon married and became a “homemaker,” as we used to put down on the school forms.

She was 4-foot-11 in her prime, smaller as she aged and osteoporosis came into play. She never got a driver’s license. She never flew in a plane. She never turned on a computer. She was content to dote on Dorie for the 60 years they were married, through absence and paycheck-to-paycheck days and fertility issues that brought my sister and I to her as adopted children. And yet mom and dad conceived our brother. Two adoptees, and then they hit the procreative lottery. Imagine that elation!

Mom and I never talked about that miracle, though, nor much about my adoption, really. The details weren’t important. She and dad were proud of their children, provided a loving home. That’s all that mattered.

Dorothy was seen and loved around town, a constant presence on foot power, and she loved it there. It was a small place, where neighbors cared and knew her joys and sorrows. Yet the day we brought her back from the nursing home, to try and carry on in a house now with a bottomless hole, she asked “How long do I have to stay here?”

I knew she meant “How long until I can rejoin Dorie?”

When my dad’s grave marker was installed, it included Dorothy’s name and birth date as well – and an empty space to the right.

It was dismaying to see that, until we came to realize Dorothy’s empty space was unbearable. Until the solace she sought, three years ago tomorrow, set her free.

I’ve been thinking about how much negative stuff I do in an average day, mindlessly. Stuff that doesn’t help me improve as a person, friend, partner, employee, citizen, stuff that actively detracts from that goal., in fact. I keep a mental list. It’s staggering. Embarrassingly wasteful of precious time. It comes to me depressingly easy if I let it; eating or drinking or reading or watching or coveting the wrong thing, and too much of it in many cases. Using empty and even hurtful words to people I love and respect when the opposite is appropriate and would be so appreciated. Burying feelings, building walls, denying truths. Failing to comfort or guide or inspire myself, let alone others. Wallowing, in the face of such grace and abundance? How dare I!

I am better than that, and I know it. We all are better than our lazy failings.

It’s mid-March, but I hereby resolve, as if a new calendar year is turning, to pursue the positive action, the uplifting outcome, the kind or soothing word. To stop and be mindful of the options each moment brings, and to do and say what I know to be true, to spurn the false result and the temporary road.

I don’t expect this to be easy; breaking habits and patterns and attitudes never is. And I don’t expect a flawless tomorrow or next day or next week. But I do expect to be better tomorrow and the next by keeping this vision in sight. By admitting that I am a flawed individual who owns the strength and the will to do better by myself and by those with whom I share space and life and dreams.

We get to our places and crossroads as we will. But speaking personally, I know I have rolled over and too often allowed inertia, especially lately, to decide too much of what follows, without reason or benefit.